So many strawberries from the garden! I loved these cookies and glad I could use a lot of my strawberries.  How are your strawberries doing in your garden?

Make these cookies with garden strawberries they are sweeter than store strawberries.  But store-bought strawberries work great too!

Lemon Strawberry Cream Cheese Cookies

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Cream together:

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*4 ounces Cream Cheese, softened

*1/4 cup Butter, softened

*1/2 cup Brown Sugar, packed

*1/4 cup Granulated Sugar

*1 Egg, room temperature

*1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

*1 teaspoon Lemon Extract

*2 teaspoons Lemon Zest

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Whisk dry ingredients together:

*1 1/4 cups Flour

*1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder

*1/2 teaspoon Salt

*Toppings-Garnish...

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*Graham Crackers Crushed, for rolling cookie dough balls

*White/Vanilla Chocolate Chips, after baking

*Strawberries, sliced and chopped as desired

*Chocolate Dipped Strawberries, optional see below

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Lemon Frosting/Icing

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*2 cups Confectioners’ Sugar

*4 tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice

*1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

*dash Sea Salt

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Stir together the above frosting/icing ingredients, adding more confectioner’ for desired piping consistency. Use frosting/icing for attaching chocolate strawberries and for piping frosting/icing on cookies using a pastry bag or quart sized zip loc bag with a corner snipped off and add frosting and pipe on cookies.

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Directions for Cream Cheese Cookies:

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Mix together the wet and dry ingredients just until combined and refrigerate the dough 2-4 hours or overnight. Using a small cookie scoop the cookies or make a rounded scoop of dough using a teaspoon and roll dough into balls.
Options:

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1. Roll cookie dough balls into the crumbled Graham Crackers and place on the Silpat covered 1/2 baking sheet. (Make a indent in the center of the cookies before baking for adding a chocolate covered strawberry, these are added after the cookies have baked and cooled and are attached by adding a small amount of frosting/icing to the dipped center before adding dipped strawberry.)

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2. Press Cookie dough balls flat and add 2-3 white/vanilla chocolate chips to the center of cookie dough and fold close making a cookie dough ball and place them on Silpat 1/2 baking sheet or add the chips to the tops of the cookies right after baking.

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3. Add chopped strawberries in cookie dough before baking or my favorite way is to add strawberries after baking to the piped frosting on cookies.

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4. Sprinkle Graham Crackers on frosting/icing piped on cookies.

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Bake the cookies in a 350*F. oven for 12-15 minutes or just until they slightly turn brown on the edges. Remove from the oven and allow cooling.

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Refrigerate cooled/decorated cookies up to two days. But they are best eaten that day of making.

Dipped Strawberries

*small strawberries, garden strawberries work great because they are small and sweet, washed and dried

*1 package (11.5 ounces) chocolate Chips, good quality chocolate chips, I like  Guittard  (milk  chocolate, dark chocolate or Vanilla Chips)

*1 tablespoon Shortening

Melt the chips and the shortening using a double boiler on low heat.

Then dip the strawberries in the melted chocolate and allow to dry on wax paper until chocolate is dry and add to cookies using frosting as glue to attach the strawberry to the cookie.

                            

Enjoy!

Lindy